Donetsk doctors now need antibiotics, heart medications and medicine for newborn children

DONETSK, May 6. /TASS/. Representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the sub-group on refugees, internally displaced persons and humanitarian assistance should urge Kiev to lift its blockade on delivering medicaments to Donbas at today’s Contact Group meeting, chief physician at Donetsk’s central hospital Valentina Podolyaka said on Wednesday.

"There is a problem of delivering medicaments to hospitals in Donbas. Of course, we receive humanitarian aid from Russia which helps us to keep afloat, but this is not enough. We need Kiev to lift its blockade on delivering medicaments to DPR. We hope that this issue will be raised today in Minsk in the framework of the Contact Group’s sub-group on refugees, internally displaced persons and humanitarian assistance," the Donetsk News Agency quoted Podolyaka as saying.

"Donetsk doctors now need antibiotics, heart medications and medicine for newborn children," she noted. "These medicaments are in Ukraine. We hope that blockade will be lifted from supplying them to DPR, and people won’t overpay for necessary medications," Podolyaka said. "We think that Ukraine should not stay aside in this matter. We. Doctors, are far from politics, we don’t separate people on ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. We think that a person has a right for medical assistance. And this right should be observed by both sides. That’s why we hope that the issue of supplying Donbass with medicaments will be raised today in Minsk, and we believe in the power of these talks," she added.

Launching working sub-groups in the framework of the Contact Group is one of the key point of the Minsk agreements on the Ukrainian settlement. Other points include ceasefire, heavy weaponry withdrawal, prisoner exchange, local elections in Donbass and constitutional reform in Ukraine.

The Minsk accords were signed on February 12, after negotiations in the so-called "Normandy format" in the Belarusian capital Minsk, bringing together Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The talks lasted for around 14 hours. Simultaneously, a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement was held in Minsk.

The Ukrainian forces and the militia forces have repeatedly accused each other of violating ceasefire and other points of the Minsk agreements.